The Morning After: Tuesday, September 26th 2017

Capcom and iam8bit remember 25 Years of Street Fighter with art gallery

Last night in iam8bit's Los Angeles headquarters, Capcom opened up its 25 Years of Street Fighter show, revealing a full gallery of artists' work featuring the now classic fighting game characters and settings. In a launch event open to the public, visitors got to see (and buy) the art on display, take pictures in front of a Street Fighter background, and even smash up a car pinata in a tribute to the games' Bonus Round mechanic.

Gabe Swarr was one of the artists in attendance last night - his piece in the show, a comic from his Life in the Analog Age series, was a little more personal than all of the various representations of Chun Li, Ryu, and Blanka. In it, he portrays the change that Street Fighter brought to the arcades when it debuted, from sillier games featuring monkeys and spaceships to fire punches and spinning kicks. "Right when Street Fighter started there were two different crowds at that point," says Swarr, "and I wanted to remember that shift in the arcades."

Swarr says that Street Fighter as a brand has lasted so long because its characters were so identifiable. Not only are these archetypal characters easy to connect to, but "it's also an international thing," he says. "It's one of the first games where they say this guy's from Brazil, this guy's from Japan and this guy's from the US. They did a really great job of incorporating that into the game."

"You could tell that that was like the basis for all the fighting games afterwards," Swarr says. "This was the template that everyone followed." Capcom's 25 Years of Street Fighter show is running at iam8bit through August 19. You can see what's on display there in the gallery below.